Wastewater treatment

New Albany’s Light, Gas and Water utility has quietly gone about fixing a problem at the city’s wastewater treatment plant and now is tackling another one.

The utility has spent $400,000 to both increase the holding capacity of the city’s lagoons and increase the amount of wastewater it can process daily. The money came from the state and the utility will repay it over a 20-year period. Bill Mattox, utility director, said that unusually heavy rains back in November 2009 caused the lagoons to overflow and some untreated water was released into the Tallahatchie River. Now, the holding capacity of the lagoons has been increased and the amount of water that the city can process per day has been increased to 3.5 million gallons from 2.5 million. “It will now take a really big flood – perhaps even a 100-year flood – for us to have any issue,” he said. Now that the treatment issues are resolved, Mattox is tackling complaints about odor from the plant. “There are systems that cost no more than $50,000 that we can put in that will control the odor,” he said. “By the time spring rolls around when we usually have some odor issues, we hope to have the problem solved.” As we have said before, that is what we like about Mattox. He’s a get-it-done kind of guy, and his leadership is making a difference in the operation of New Albany’s public utility.